Bonus Exercise 1: Integrating via APIs

Duration: 45 minutes

In this bonus exercise, we will use a real webservice API to update our list of airports which we previously imported via an excel spreadsheet. This will ensure that the locations all remain up to date with some additional data fields for tracking.

If you noticed in exercise 1, when we imported the Airports from the excel sheet, the Lat and Lon data is empty, we will go ahead and fix that.

Note: This session will require you to use a 3rd party API service to get data. Your personal data will be required to sign up to this service. If you are not comfortable with exposing this data, skip this exercise or let your instructor know.

Part 1: Create an Integration Action

1. Go to https://airlabs.co/ and click Sign Up

   

2. Fill in the relevant details to sign up for an account

3. Verify your account with the email sent to the email address sent to your email account

   

4. Sign in to your airlabs account on the next page

5. Click Copy next to API Key

   

6. Paste your copied API Key somewhere that you are able to retrieve later

7. Click Documentation, then Airports

8. Quickly read through this API documentation, notice that the API request has already been populated for you - We will rebuild this

9. Navigate back to your main ServiceNow interface, and search and click Action Designer under All

   

10. You are brough to the Flow Designer interface

11. Click the New button on the top right, then click Action

    

12. In the pop-up, enter Get Airport Details under Action name. For description, enter Calls the Airlabs API to retrieve airport details

    

13. Click Submit

14. Click Create Input

15. Under Label, enter IATA Code, then press enter

    

16. Click on the + icon in between Inputs and Error Evaluation on the left sidebar

    

17. In the pop-up box, scroll down and click REST

    

18. Change Connection to Define Connection Inline

19. Copy this URL and paste it under Base URL:
    https://airlabs.co/api/v9

20. Enter /airports under Resource Path

21. Click on the + icon for Query Parameters

22. Enter api_key under Name, then paste your previously copied API Key under Value

23. 1. Click on the + icon for Query Parameters

24. Enter iata_code under Name, then drag and drop the IATA Code data pill on the right sidebar onto the Value field

25. Click on the + icon for Headers

26. Enter User-Agent under Name, and XXXXXX under Value

27. Your form should now look like this:

    

28. Click Save at the top right

29. Click Test at the top right

30. Enter SIN under the IATA Code field, then click Run Test

31. Click Your test has finished running. View the action execution details.

    

32. The new tab shows every step of the execution so far. Expand Steps and scroll down to the line that shows Response Body

33. Click on the corresponding value and copy the entire block of text

    

34. Navigate back the the main Action Get Aiport Details tab

35. Close the pop-up

36. Click on the + icon on the left sidebar after REST step

    

37. Scroll down and click JSON Parser

38. Drag and drop the Response Body data pill from the right sidebar onto the Source data field

39. Paste what you copied onto the main body

40. Toggle the Structured Payload View

41. Click Generate Target

42. The Target on the right should be generated

43. Here are all the steps in sequence:

    

44. Click Outputs on the left sidebar

45. Click Create Output

    

46. In the new row, change Label to Output, Name to output and Type to Array.Object

    

47. Click Exit Edit Mode

48. On the right sidebar, expand root under JSON Parser Step

49. Drag and drop the response data pill onto the Output Value field

50. Click Publish on the top right

    

51. Click Test

52. Enter BKK and run test, then view execution details

53. Ensure that the Output is defined, and when clicking on it you see a result similar to what is shown below

    

54. You’ve completed integration! Now let’s use it in a workflow

Part 2: Using our integration action

1. Close all the pop-up boxes and click on the + tab

2. Click Flow

   

3. Under Flow name, enter Update airport information

4. Set Run As to System User

   

5. Click Submit

6. Click Add a trigger, then select Daily under date. This will run this workflow everyday

   

7. Click Done

8. Click Add an Action, Flow Logic, or Subflow

9. Click Action

10. Search and select Look Up Records - Pay special attention to selecting Look Up Records and not Look Up Record

    

11. Search and select Airport under Table

12. Click Done

13. Click Add an Action, Flow Logic, or Subflow

14. Click Flow Logic

15. Click For Each

    

16. Drag and drop the Airport Records data pill from the right sidebar onto the Items field

17. Click the + icon under the For Each Item in step

    

18. Click Action

19. Search and click Get Airport Details (this was the API integration action we just created)

    

20. Expand Airport Record on the left sidebar under the 2 - For Each section

21. Drag and drop the Code data pill onto the IATA Code field

22. Click Done

    

23. Add a new For Each Flow Logic under Get Airport Details

24. Drag and drop the Output data pill onto Items

25. Click the + under the new For Each Item in step

    

26. Click Action, then search and select Update Record

27. Drag and drop the Airport Record data pill under 2 - For Each onto the Record field

28. Click + Add field value

29. Search and select Lat, expand the response_object data pill under 4 - For Each

30. Drag and drop the lat data pill on the empty field

31. Click + Add field value

32. Search and select Lon, expand the response_object data pill under 4 - For Each

33. Drag and drop the lng data pill on the empty field

34. Refer to the full animation below:

    

35. Click Done

36. Click Activate on the top right

37. Click Test

38. Click Run Test

39. This will take a few minutes to run as we have 24 airports to update. Once done, click Your test has finished running. View the flow execution details.

40. Review the execution, take some time to expand each step to understand what has happened in this flow

    

41. Go back to App Engine Studio and preview the Airport table

    

42. This will open in a new tab, verify that all the Lat and Lon fields are now populated

    

This flow should now run everyday to update the latitude and longitude of each airport in your table. In a real life scenario, you could do so much more with the API, but this is just an example to show you the possibilites. For example, you could integrate with a complex booking API like Amadeus, and your users could search for flights and book flights and hotels directly from your custom application!